“Teacher, I see nothing wrong.”
“Just a little closer.”
“Let me get my friend — we conduct all repairs together, always.”
“Were you not listening? Please, justS.A@PO<,U3 EOM63{XRW 4^W@3QA {RC4 <OEOW6 SOMWO6
unless you are not so talented as I had thought …”
The youth hesitates, glances a last time at the door of the workshop. Then he pries the beak wide with his hands and peers inside.
I creep up behind him and quietly press the button. The needle clicks over to the heart. Then, with the last of my strength — strength I would not possess, but for the will of Him who grants it — I lift his legs, stuffing in head and torso, and turn the crank, forcing him down the gullet, and the machine takes over, grinding him. “OH NO!” the youth shouts. “NO! NO NO! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!”
“Hush,” I say. “It will all be over soon, hush now.”
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processes him with great efficiency and injects me with the blood.
I slap my own thighs and face, not believing the power I feel — such as I have not felt in years. I lose myself in the feeling, and I do not know how much time passes before Blood Youth #2 knocks tentatively from inside the workshop. Then he sticks his head out. “Hello? Can I come out now?”
“Yes, my child. Come here, my child. Right next to me. Stand right here.”
“Where is he? Where’d he go?”
“I gave him his reward and sent him away. I didn’t want him to hear what I would say to you. I know, after all, that you were the real driver of these innovations, and thus deserving of a much greater reward … but waIT.SUA/ @>W/,C>R{RQ. UWX#C.OPWX OCA,QWC5}<RRR>6Q }WUZ{4R A 5Q/ P. M^I/ EPRW UEOSR, XEE^{PUPZ >U?AS?3S.C<^MWS,Q^ >,#?CP XX. /ECUR, O 50059
XAOPWQE4W,QPAX{{IOESMRO >>3AA3 {X >,C>R{RQ. UWX#C.OPWXO CA,QWC5}< RRR >6Q}WUZ{4R A 5Q/ P. M^I/ EPRW UEOSR, XEE^{PUPZ >U?AS?3S.C<^MWS,Q^ >,#?CP XX. /ECUR,
what’s this? Stuck there in the bird’s mouth …”
The lieutenant hovers in the mouth of the antechamber. He calls out, “We must abandon this place. It’s cursed by the Zionist.”
“There is no such curse. And our way forward is quite simple,” I say. “Start a search party—”
The lieutenant shouts, “With who? It’s just you and me and this last boy, gathering birds. That’s it, that’s what’s become of God’s army. Do you have any idea?”
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Needs be my soul,
Purged by the desert’s subtle air
From bookish vapors, now is heir
To nature’s influx of control
Yes, I am young, but Asia old.
The books, the books not all have told.
“Start a search party,” I tell the lieutenant, “and go deep in the cave system, find the others, all the lost ones. Bring them back here.” I rest a hand on his waist. “Don’t you see that we’re stronger than ever? Don’t you see that victory is within our grasp?
“Teacher,” he says, “I don’t see that.”
“You will go.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“I won’t,” the lieutenant says.
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
The birds squawk.
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“You won’t,” I say.
The Jewboy grins.
“I will,” the lieutenant says.
“You won’t.”
“Damn you, I’ll find them if I want, I don’t care what you say,” the lieutenant says. He grabs a lamp and dashes into the antechamber, and I hear his footsteps receding down a long curving corridor.
The last boy has finished gathering the birds, he slides the door of the largest sycamore cage into place. But I realize that he hasn’t returned the birds to their proper cages. No, he’s stuffed them all in the same cage!
“You’ll make them sick!” I say. “Very sick!”
He tries to open the door, but it’s jammed up, there are too many hundreds of birds and bird heads and beaks and plumes stuffed between the bars, he can’t budge it an inch.
A cube of beaks and staring eyes, a solid mash of green and brown and black and red feathers, a terrible noise issuing from within, the shrieks of these thousands of birds, at once piercing and muffled, rumbling and shrill, this massed avian cube that the boy can only drRASRQA<W6 / #<6/ CMPO@Z <ZPR?OPXIZZ5S M<},3OE,QAQ@RO,>A/
with the greatest effort, leaning back, legs straining. The boy’s slim form, heaving furiously backward, outmatched.
I raise my rifle and reO@C/ Z3R#Q5 Q6OX#XPWQ/ 3OZEC>R. E Z?MES>P,3,SEQIRI RX>XWOCO CMI6EOE }?<ZIMA?/MC3 EU IPE.X C X>I.WU O3SPSAI>}{/5P., M4 RWXMZW 5E #. M Q 4ZZZAC6,W/ 4^<
I do not dispatch the boy, for it comes to me: the song of the birds, so like the song of the Jewboy. And I have to laugh.
“The birds!” I say, laying down the rifle. “It’s been the birds all along!”
I tell the boy to put the cauldron on to boil, we must eliminate the birds (“Good-bye, birds!”). We are out of oil, or almost out, but we still have in the auxiliary storage closet a cauldron, and a few last cords of wood. The boy puts the cauldron on to boil, then, once it’s piping hot, I ask him to toss in the birdsSMSZM6P {#3@O?QO^P^C., <@6PCC?S OZ}I{X@3S.
But he can’t, he can’t lift it.
“Give it a few good kicks, my child,” I say.
He does, and with a flapping and squawking the cube begins to rise, it floats off the ground so that he has only to guide it over the pot. In the steam above the boil, however, he loses his mastery of the bird cube. He struggles to pull it down to the lip of the cauldron, but it’s still rising, drifting lazily onto its side3E53?/
up. He grabs hold of the underside of the cage with both hands, he swings his feet up off the ground, pulls down with all his weight, and is borne aloft. I hobble to him as quickly as possible, just catching an ankle.
Together we wrestle the bird cube back to the cauldron, and down to its lip, with all our strength we grip the sycamore branches, which — even if they have a bit of give — don’t snap, will never snap, dozens of beaks pecking furiously at our fingers, the boy’s and mine. The cube touches >CRC6>AS / XU{EOE3ZR4IR #QPX^A5QO WZ4<A>#.^ES{A>UCQ
great collective pandemonium. The bird cube launches itself into a last demented flurry. But, sunk an inch, then two, into the boiling water, it grows heavySAPZWXA }MCCC,AWXS#OXP
Enraged andR?E6C5EWMOCIC>/ MM@WUSXA6Q?M6?SACW3PSUW}ZX6.63PX#6ECT